• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.162-167
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• 2015

Purpose: To evaluate the usefulness of quantitative analysis of the facial nerve using contrast-enhanced three-dimensional (CE 3D) fluid-attenuated inversion recovery-volume isotopic turbo spin echo acquisition (FLAIR-VISTA) for the diagnosis of Bell's palsy in pediatric patients. Materials and Methods: Twelve patients (24 nerves) with unilateral acute facial nerve palsy underwent MRI from March 2014 through March 2015. The unaffected sides were included as a control group. First, for quantitative analysis, the signal intensity (SI) and relative SI (RSI) for canalicular, labyrinthine, geniculate ganglion, tympanic, and mastoid segments of the facial nerve on CE 3D FLAIR images were measured using regions of interest (ROI). Second, CE 3D FLAIR and CE T1-SE images were analyzed to compare their diagnostic performance by visual assessment (VA). The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of RSI measurement and VA were compared. Results: The absolute SI of canalicular and mastoid segments and the sum of the five mean SI (total SI) were higher in the palsy group than in the control group, but with no significant differences. The RSI of the canalicular segment and the total SI were significantly correlated with the symptomatic side (P = 0.028 and 0.015). In 11/12 (91.6%) patients, the RSI of total SI resulted in accurate detection of the affected side. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for detecting Bell's palsy were higher with RSI measurement than with VA of CE 3D FLAIR images, while those with VA of CE T1-SE images were higher than those with VA of CE 3D FLAIR images. Conclusion: Quantitative analysis of the facial nerve using CE 3D FLAIR imaging can be useful for increasing the diagnostic performance in children with Bell's palsy when difficult to diagnose using VA alone. With regard to VA, the diagnostic performance of CE T1-SE imaging is superior to that of CE 3D FLAIR imaging in children. Further studies including larger populations are necessary.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.44-52
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• 2016

Purpose: To quantitatively and qualitatively compare fat-suppressed MRI quality using iterative decomposition of water and fat with echo asymmetry and least-squares estimation (IDEAL) with that using frequency selective fat-suppression (FSFS) T2- and postcontrast T1-weighted fast spin-echo images of the head and neck at 3T. Materials and Methods: The study was approved by our Institutional Review Board. Prospective MR image analysis was performed in 36 individuals at a single-center. Axial fat suppressed T2- and postcontrast T1-weighted images with IDEAL and FSFS were compared. Visual assessment was performed by two independent readers with respect to; 1) metallic artifacts around oral cavity, 2) susceptibility artifacts around upper airway, paranasal sinus, and head-neck junction, 3) homogeneity of fat suppression, 4) image sharpness, 5) tissue contrast of pathologies and lymph nodes. The signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) for each image sequence were assessed. Results: Both IDEAL fat suppressed T2- and T1-weighted images significantly reduced artifacts around airway, paranasal sinus, and head-neck junction, and significantly improved homogeneous fat suppression in compared to those using FSFS (P < 0.05 for all). IDEAL significantly decreased artifacts around oral cavity on T2-weighted images (P < 0.05, respectively) and improved sharpness, lesion-to-tissue, and lymph node-to-tissue contrast on T1-weighted images (P < 0.05 for all). The mean SNRs were significantly improved on both T1- and T2-weighted IDEAL images (P < 0.05 for all). Conclusion: IDEAL technique improves image quality in the head and neck by reducing artifacts with homogeneous fat suppression, while maintaining a high SNR.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.148-154
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• 2005

Since the output of retina for visual stimulus is carried by neurons of very diverse functional properties, it is not adequate to use conventional single electrode for recording the retinal action potential. For this purpose, we used newly developed multichannel recording system for monitoring the simultaneous electrical activities of many neurons in a functioning piece of retina. Retinal action potentials are recorded with an extra-cellular planar array of 60 microelectrodes. In studying the collective activity of the ganglion cell population it is essential to recognize basic functional distinctions between individual neurons. Therefore, it is necessary to detect and to classify the action potential of each ganglion cell out of mixed signal. We programmed M-files with MATLAB for this sorting process. This processing is mandatory for further analysis, e.g. poststimulus time histogram (PSTH), auto-correlogram, and cross-correlogram. We established MATLAB based protocol for waveform classification and verified that this approach was effective as an initial spike sorting method.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.84-92
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• 2002

A $32{\times}32$ pixels foveated (linear-polar) structure retina chip with the function of local-light adaptation for edge detection has been designed and fabricated using CMOS technology. Human retina can detect a wide range of light intensity. In this study, we use the biologically-inspired visual signal processing mechanism that consists of photoreceptors, horizontal cells, and bipolar cells in order to implement the function of edge detection in the retina chip. For a local-light adaptive function, the size of receptive field is changed locally according to the input light intensity. The spatial distribution of sensing pixels in the foveated retina chip has the advantages of selective reduction of image data and good resolution in central part to carry out the elaborate image processing with still enough resolution in the outer parts. The designed chip has been fabricated using standard $0.6\;{\mu}m$ double-poly triple-metal CMOS technology and optimized using HSPICE simulator.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.39C no.11
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• pp.985-993
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• 2014

This paper suggested a new evaluation method for optimal HUD position through a correlation based on between biological signal as and statistical analysis which using (Electroencephalogram, EEG) and ANOVA. This experiment was conducted two kinds of method to evaluate the optimal HUD position. At first, visual stimulus suggested from six different positions(the top and the bottom of the left, the top and the bottom of the center and the top and the bottom of the right on the screen) in laboratory and an object image was shown for 30 seconds in a screen which has $235{\times}197cm2$ size. And second, HUD image was configured from three different positions and an object image was shown for 30 seconds in a screen. EEG, which used ${\alpha}$-wave and ${\beta}$-wave for evaluate an emotional stability, were measured from Fp1, Fp2, F7 and F8 channel based on ten to twenty electrode system. From the result in laboratory, F7 ${\beta}$-wave was shown statistically significant to significance probability of 0.006 and between ${\alpha}$-wave and ${\beta}$-wave were showed a negative correlation(r=-0.190). Also, Both the top of left and the bottom of center were showed lower ${\beta}$-wave than the bottom of right. From the result in railway simulator, Fp1 ${\beta}$-wave was appeared statistically significant as significance probability of 0.033 and it was showed lower ${\beta}$-wave than center. The outcome of this study will be helpful about evaluation of optimal HUD position through correlation between alpha wave and beta wave.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.611-615
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• 2004

A neural prostheses can be designed to permit stimulation of specific sites in the nervous system to restore their functions, lost due to disease or trauma. This study focuses on the feasibility of optoelecronic stimulation into nervous system. Optoelectronic stimulation supplies, power and signal into the implanted optical detector inside the body by optics. It can be effective strategy especially on the retinal prosthesis, because it enables the non-invasive connection between the external source and internal detector through natural optical window 'eye'. Therefore, we designed an effective neural stimulating setup by optically based stimulation. Stimulating on the sciatic nerve of a rat with proper depth probe through optical stimulation needs higher ratio of current spreading through the neural surface, because of high impedance of neural interface. To increase the insertion current spreading into the neuron, we used a parallel low resistance compared to load resistance organic interface and calculated the optimized outer parallel resistance for maximum insertion current with the assumption of limited current by photodiode. Optimized outer parallel resistance was at a range of 500Ω-700Ω and a current was at a level between 580uA and 650uA. Stimulating current efficiency from initial photodiode induced current was between 47.5 and 59.7%. Various amplitude and frequency of the optical stimulation on the sciatic nerve showed the reliable visual tremble, and the action potential was also recorded near the stimulating area. These result demonstrate that optoelectronic stimulation with no bias can be applied to the retinal prosthesis and other neuroprosthetic area.

• Korean Journal of Animal Reproduction
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.173-182
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• 2002

The mechanisms underlying of the visual assessment and resulting in optimum embryonic development following in vitro maturation, fertilization, and culture are unclear, It was known that in vitro produced embryos show more frequent occurrence of fragmentation, which resulted in poor developmental potential and decreased implantation rate. The objective of this study was to investigate the apoptotic rates in bovine blastocyst derived from in vitro fertilization (IVF) and nuclear transfer (NT). In addition, the expression levels of Bcl-2 and Bax gene were investigated in the blastocyst to confirm their potential roles in the regulation of apoptosis during preimplantation embryonic development. Analysis of apoptosis was carried out by using terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase mediate dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) method. The levels of Bcl-2 and Bax gene in the blastocyst derived from IVF and NT were determined by RT-PCR. The proportion of TUNEL positive signal in blastocyst derived from NT was significantly higher than that in blastocyst derived from IVF (p<0.001). Bcl-2 expression level of blastocyst derived from IVF was higher than that of blstocyst derived from NT. However, high expression level of Bax was observed in the blastocyst derived from NT. These results indicates that apoptosis is more responsible for fiagmentation in bovine blastocyst derived from NT than IVF. These results suggested that the increase of developmental failure followed by NT could be caused by nuclear fragmentation as apoptosis.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.309-318
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• 2004

This paper proposes the H.264-based selective fine granular scalable (FGS) coding scheme that selectively uses the temporal prediction data in the enhancement layer. The base layer of the proposed scheme is basically coded by the H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC) visual coding scheme that is the state-of-art in codig efficiency. The enhancement layer is basically coded by the same bitplane-based algorithm of the MPEG-4 (Part 2) fine granular scalable coding scheme. In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm that uses the temproal prediction mechanism inside the enhancement layer and the effective selection mechanism to decide whether the temporally-predicted data would be sent to the decoder or not. Whenever applying the temporal prediction inside the enhancement layer, the temporal redundancies may be effectively reduced, however the drift problem would be severly occurred especially at the low bitrate transmission, due to the mismatch bewteen the encoder's and decoder's reference frame images. Proposed algorithm selectively uses the temporal-prediction data inside the enhancement layer only in case those data could siginificantly reduce the temporal redundancies, to minimize the drift error and thus to improve the overall coding efficiency. Simulation results, based on several test image sequences, show that the proposed scheme has 1∼3 dB higher coding efficiency than the H.264-based FGS coding scheme, even 3∼5 dB higher coding efficiency than the MPEG-4 FGS international standard.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.367-372
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• 2018

Defects in aging infrastructures such as pre-stressed concrete bridges and cable bridges can cause a collapse of the entire structure. Defects, however, are often located inside of the structures that they are not visible from the outside. For example, in PSC bridges, because reinforcement steels are encased by exterior covers, corrosion and void on the reinforcement steel cannot be detected with a visual inspection. Therefore, in this paper, a new non-destructive evaluation(NDE) method that can detect defects inside of structures is presented. The new method utilizes sending of electrical signals, a method often utilized in electrical engineering to detect any discontinuities on power cables. In order to confirm the applicability and accuracy of the method, some experiments were conducted in the laboratory. And to overcome the hardship of conducting experiments on real structures due to their enormous size, simualtions were conudcted using a commercial program, COMSOL. The results of the experiments were analyzed and compared to confirm the accuracy of the simualtions.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.855-865
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• 2018

Sound event detection is one of the research areas to model human auditory cognitive characteristics by recognizing events in an environment with multiple acoustic events and determining the onset and offset time for each event. DCASE, a research group on acoustic scene classification and sound event detection, is proceeding challenges to encourage participation of researchers and to activate sound event detection research. However, the size of the dataset provided by the DCASE Challenge is relatively small compared to ImageNet, which is a representative dataset for visual object recognition, and there are not many open sources for the acoustic dataset. In this study, the sound events that can occur in indoor and outdoor are collected on a larger scale and annotated for dataset construction. Furthermore, to improve the performance of the sound event detection task, we developed a dual CNN structured sound event detection system by adding a supplementary neural network to a convolutional neural network to determine the presence of sound events. Finally, we conducted a comparative experiment with both baseline systems of the DCASE 2016 and 2017.